Reports from our company leaders

GroupM

Report by Irwin Gotlieb
Global chairman
and

Kelly Clark
Global chief executive officer

G

GroupM delivered another year of strong results in a challenging environment.

Slow growth and complexity in the supply chain force advertisers to seek value and transparency. In 2016, the level of new business reviews was significant. GroupM lost two major clients but still won a market-leading $5.6 billion of new business, according to RECMA.

Our global ‘brand safety’ unit has been active for three years, and no such unit exists elsewhere in the industry

Trust must underpin the relationships between advertisers, buyers, sellers and the technologies that connect them. GroupM is leading the market in ensuring the digital supply chain’s integrity through improved viewability, more robust measurement, and the protection of clients from content pirates and fraudsters. Our global ‘brand safety’ unit has been active for three years, and no such unit exists elsewhere in the industry.

The future is clear. Media allocation, optimization and attribution have to be informed by data and executed at the speed of the platforms on which advertisers need to win. At the same time, we must maintain our unique perspective that comes from deep visibility and executional skills across and between ‘walled gardens’ and other channels, advertiser categories and geographies.

GroupM is leading the market in ensuring the digital supply chain’s integrity

We announced the creation of [m]PLATFORM to meet these needs. [m]PLATFORM will enable GroupM, its agencies and our partners across WPP, to create personalized communications for clients at scale with improved performance and efficiency.

In addition to creating an outstanding leadership team for [m]PLATFORM, GroupM appointed a new global CEO, as did our agency MEC. We salute Dominic Proctor, our outgoing president and WPP’s first media agency leader, who has moved onto new challenges after 30 years of service to the Group.

We aspire to be more intelligent and responsive than ever, and relentless in the pursuit of talent and applying that talent to the advantage of our clients through better and faster insights and actions. We remain, as always, focused on our clients’ success.